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You Will Have to Fight for Your Contentment

It doesn’t play nice. You’re walking along enjoying life, and suddenly someone appears on the sidewalk or television with a bigger house, relishing a career they were born for, holding someone’s hand or pushing a stroller. Boom. Envy sweeps over you like a tidal wave. The tabloids and self-help mags shout from the supermarket rack about everything that you’re not. Pow. The life you have seems to darken and pale. You hear a story in church about how someone else has finally reached the end of a debilitating trial. Crunch. You sigh even as you celebrate, wondering why God hasn’t delivered you.

The rush of envy doesn’t yield. If it’s not a deluge, it’s a leak that gradually covers the floor and wreaks havoc with your soul’s drywall. Let your guard down and your day is shot.

Envy is a menace.

And how do we typically answer?

Well…we sigh, try to count our blessings and remind ourselves of the goodness of God. We try half-heartedly to distract ourselves.

That’s…about it.

And then we wonder where our joy went.

Perhaps the problem is that we’re resisting a gale with a small pink umbrella. Scripture actually commands us to do more. Much more.

It’s not a sin to have desires. Sometimes God actually uses them to propel us into his will for our lives. It’s when you don’t have joy in Jesus rising up alongside and surpassing your other desires that you’ve reached idolatry.

King Josiah didn’t pull his punches in dealing with Judah’s idolatry.

The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley…he did away with the idolatrous priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense…he took the Asherah pole from the temple of the Lord to the Kidron Valley…he ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people.He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the temple of the Lord…

He desecrated Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice their son or daughter in the fire to Molek.He removed from the entrance to the temple of the Lord the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun…Josiah then burned the chariots dedicated to the sun. …

He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah had erected on the roof near the upper room of Ahaz, and the altars Manasseh had built in the two courts of the temple of the Lord. He removed them from there, smashed them to pieces and threw the rubble into the Kidron Valley.The king also desecrated the high places that were east of Jerusalem on the south of the Hill of Corruption—the ones Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the vile goddess of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the vile god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the people of Ammon.

Even the altar at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin—even that altar and high place he demolished. He burned the high place and ground it to powder, and burned the Asherah pole also. (2 Kings 23)

The tearing down and action verbing goes on for twenty verses. By the end of Josiah’s whirlwind, the Kidron Valley is choking with the remnants of Judah’s sin.

What refreshing gumption. The kingdom needs more of this. Josiah took no prisoners. He set himself even against the legacy of his own ancestors. God honors him in Scripture – “never before had there been a king like Josiah” (v. 25) – because of the thoroughness and vigor of his actions.

We need to stop seeing envy as smoke that can be idly waved away. Enough with the passive, halfhearted measures. It’s a fire, to be fought with a hose of Living Water. It’s a system, buoyed and harnessed by the world (in order to make money) and the devil (in order to make disheartened Christians). If you want to be free of it, you’ll have to do what Josiah did – fight.

For some of us, this means turning off the television Netflix. I don’t know what happened to shows like Roseanne, which celebrated the struggling family in the modest house, but my generation gets the glamour and wealth of The O.C. and Gossip Girl. It cuts off contentment at the knees. Same with the tabloids; how much more content might you be if you saw your supermarket’s “family-friendly” aisle as a refuge from envy?

Perhaps it’s social media that needs to go, as some of my friends have found. “Here’s everything you didn’t get invited to!” They oughta call it Envybook. Contentment was so much easier before. The product placements, the strategies-for-success humanism that leaks in from sponsors…if these things make it harder to appreciate what God has given you, why set them before your eyes? Fight for your contentment; break envy’s supply lines; allow no place for ambushes.

Single ladies – may I intrude? – put down the dimestore novels and chick flicks. Why would you shoot your contentment in the foot like that? Single guys, guard your eyes. Lust isn’t just horrific sin, it’s the first step to being dissatisfied with your future wife. I’ve known a few singles who stopped going to weddings. A radical step, maybe, but they know they owe God more than they owe their friends, and what they owe God is their contentment. They mail the newlyweds a certificate to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and turn their eyes upon Jesus. And they find the joy flows more easily.

This is all quite disruptive. I’ll be the first to confess thinking of such steps and going (best whiny voice) Aww, do I have to?

Well, no, you don’t. You don’t have to escape the “quiet desperation”, as Thoreau put it. You can stay there if you like.

But my testimony is, if I want joy, I have to get off the couch and ensure it.

The necessary steps will be different for everyone, but my point is that Christian discipline has been made to look passive for far too long. God didn’t give us Ephesians 6 to be poetic. There are things to be fought for, and one of them is the happiness that comes from enjoying what God has already given us.

20 thoughts on “You Will Have to Fight for Your Contentment”

Another insightful and challenging post Brandon.
I must confess that I haven’t given much thought to envy. But I see how we must fight to be content. Things have to be put into place, decisions have to made, things have to be taken out or stopped so we can be content.
So many other solid points you made. I like what you said concernng desire. Desire is not bad. We must make sure our desire for God takes precedence over every other desire.
That’s a lot to chew on…..great post!

Loved reading this! Very relatable and makes me squirm. Haha!
Everything here on this earth is temporary! If we waste time desiring the world, we have no time left to desire God’s Kingdom! “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through. My treasures are laid up, somewhere beyond the blue!” This post reminded me of that song! 🙂
Thank you for this!

Amen! Well said. Something that really helps with envy is honesty,vulnerability, speaking the truth about our lives. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. So those perfect lives we see on facebook,on the TV, are not real, they are often masks, illusions. Many people we think are well off are actually drowning in debt, suffering from depression. We’ve had a lot of talented people in the world who seem to have it all, talent, wealth,fame, but they’re dying, they’re suffering from addictions, failed relationship, and suicide.

I met a really gorgeous girl the other day, but she was distant, stand-offish. I was thinking snobby.Turns out she was just abused and really bullied in school. Even I have this knee jerk reaction that says if you look good on the outside, on the surface, life must have been good to you. It often isn’t true at all.

This is an excellent post, Brandon. It would be great if you could find a venue somewhere and preach it. It would be great if a thousand people could preach it. It would be great if ONE television preacher would preach it. We need Josiah…

Well stated Brandon! I’ve often said, if you are on a diet you don’t decide to sit in front of an open fridge. Feeding on God’s Word is so different from what we see on TV these days, darkness is advancing from all corners and at all levels. We all need to make decisions on what we let into our homes, our minds and our hearts. As Christians, we need to say, like King Josiah, enough is enough. Blessings!

King David was careful about what he put before his eyes but our generation has become sloppy. We feast at the world’s table (TV) and then wonder why the world doesn’t see anything that we have that they would want. That is another reason that as a woman I don’t shop unless I need something or the beautiful things in the store make me feel discontented with what I have. TV time would be better spent in family devotions and doing fun things as a family. Singles can get a degree online or find ways to serve others. There are sooooo many options- but we need to remember to redeem the time because the days are evil. Great post Brandon!